DEAR PROFESSOR - I am a 13-year-old eighth grader, and I hear some VERY interesting stories, some of which qualify as urban legends.
I got your book "Curses! Broiled Again!" for my birthday, and now I'm sending you a story I heard. It's a version of the "AIDS Mary" legend in your book.A woman meets a man in a bar. They hit it off right away, and the man asks her to join him on vacation at his beach house in the Bahamas. She accepts and goes with him. They make love, and the woman has never been happier.
On the day she has to leave, the man sees her off at the airport. He gives her a present, telling her not to open it until she gets home.
Back home, she finds a coffeemaker inside. A note on it says, "This is for all the lonely nights you'll be facing. Welcome to the world of AIDS."
I hope you'll find some use for this story. (You'll probably be hearing more from me.) - MARY CARROLL, MILLINGTON, MD.
A coffeemaker! What next? Just when I thought I'd heard every possible variation on "AIDS Mary" - or, in this case, "AIDS Harry" - along comes another Mary with a new twist on the story, one that provides an interesting example of the ways legends change.
The original story, as I heard it in 1986, described a man's night of lovemaking with a beautiful stranger. He awakens the next morning to find her gone; written on the mirror in lipstick are the words "Welcome to the world of AIDS."
The story of AIDS Mary, as she came to be known, was told all over the United States and Europe for the next few years.
The message on the mirror was the most common ending, although sometimes the woman merely left a note stuck to the mirror or pinned to a pillow.
The two characters sometimes reversed, so the woman awoke to find the man gone; he had either written the "Welcome" message in lipstick on the mirror or simply left a note.
By spring 1990, however, the "AIDS Harry" variation had taken over. Usually the couple visited some tropical setting, after which the woman got the AIDS message. At first it was just a note in an envelope, but soon the note was described as found hidden inside a gift.
Usually the gift was a small coffin, although the wording varied: little coffin, miniature coffin, tiny coffin, etc., and it was often said to be a wooden coffin, painted black. There were variations along the lines of "a small coffin with a tiny lid," "a small carved wooden coffin" and "a purple velvet box with a miniature black coffin inside." I've also heard "a small plastic coffin."
Some storytellers, though, phrased it as "a tiny (or miniature) gold coffin" or "a lucky charm that's a finely detailed gold coffin" or "a gold-plated bracelet charm in the form of a coffin."
One version described the gift as "a black cross in a box" with a note attached; another version mentioned "a black rose and a note."
An elaboration of this theme described "a bouquet of dead roses and a small gift box, inside of which is a tiny coffin; when the lid is opened, a skeleton pops up holding a sign saying `Welcome to the world of AIDS.' "
Then along came a version of the legend in which the package contained a can of coffee; the woman worried that perhaps drugs were being smuggled inside, but what she found was that familiar little coffin containing the usual note.
The logical word "coffin" in the story evidently was misunderstood, and it became the meaningless "coffee." The drug-smuggling reference provided a logical explanation for the rather odd gift.
Even odder, though, is the gift of a "coffeemaker." That detail led someone who'd heard it to invent the explanation that it's "for all the lonely nights" in the version Mary sent to me.
Thanks, Mary, for this nifty variation and for the opportunity to review the legend's changes. I certainly hope to hear from you again in the future.- "Curses! Broiled Again," Jan Harold Brunvand's fourth collection of urban legends, is now available in paperback from Norton. Send your questions and urban legends to him in care of the Deseret News.